CONTROLAgents & automation
Jev and Pokémon Red
Forja@ImForja
1:34This project explores the limitations of using Jev, a model suited for 'system 1' tasks, to play a JRPG like Pokémon Red, suggesting that a well-designed harness with generalized actions and milestones could make it feasible.
Spent some time with Jev trying to see how it played Pokémon Red.
The TLDR is that playing a JRPG is not a good use for Jev, which, to be fair, is in line with their description that the model is suited for system 1 tasks, not system 2.
That's not to say it's impossible to beat Pokémon Red with Jev. If you build a good harness around it, where instead of Game Boy buttons as decisions you give it general actions like "Navigate to Oak's house" or "Pick Bulbasaur" and also short-term milestones to progress the game like "Pick Oak's parcel at Viridian City Pokémart" it's probably doable.
But at that point, the real engineering feat would be building a harness that makes general enough suggestions to allow Jev to be creative while still being possible to reach the goal of finishing the game. Otherwise, we would just be doing a scripted run with extra steps.
In case you're curious, here is a video of Jev playing Pokémon Red till the point of leaving the player's house. It cost 2.9 cents to get here, but to be fair, I could probably have made some optimizations.